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Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Cricut cartridge list of content - Baby Steps

Happy 4th of July! Today we are looking at a must have cartridge if you scrapbook babies. This post is a comprehensive overview of the Cricut Cartridge, Baby Steps. I used to struggle with scapbooking my kids baby pictures because everything out there is generally in a pastel palette. All you have to do is spend 5 minutes with my kids and you'd know that Eva (our Diva) is hot pink all the way and Aidan is much more of a primary color kid. With the Baby Steps cartridge, I was able to make adorable and relevant titles in whatever color I wanted. Another HUGE bonus is that this cartridge has a FONT!
As with my previous cartridge posts, I will discuss a little about the sample that you find on the
back of the cartridge, a bit on the handbook pages, and, at the bottom of the entry, I'll post a jpeg of and link to a spreadsheet that lists all of the images and words/phrases on Baby Steps- with their page numbers!

First lets take a look at the "sample" sheet (above) which is designed to give
you a general idea of the content on the cartridge. You can find this
on the back of the boxand as a thumbnail in online shops. You should note that the sample does not show
ALL of the content on Baby Steps (as is the case with all of the sample sheets designed
by Provocraft). The sample is designed as a marketing piece to give you a taste of what you will get. To see all the images, phrases, fonts, words, projects,
cards and/ or paper designs, (depending on the type of cartridge) you
will need to review the handbook.

Take a quick look at the notes I have written on the edges of the handbook page. By understanding what the function keys do, you will get a lot more from your cartridge and save a lot of time and paper trying to figure it out on your own!
The handbook colors are used as a sample. You can do the exact same set of die cut layers using red, blue and yellow instead of light pink, dark pink and green. Each page in the handbook will offer the same kind of information which can be a little confusing when you want to do several things.
For example, you can flip through the handbook to find the image you want, but the phrase on that page isn't right for what you are doing, so you have to flip through the book again, this time only focusing on the bottom center box which shows the phrases. That is a lot of flipping and after a few layouts, you can get dizzy!

I use the spreadsheet below to help cut back on the manual searching. What I have done is borrowed from the database at cricutcheatsheet to get a list of all of the images and phrases/ words on the Baby Steps cartridge. Then I went through the handbook, page by page, box by box and added the page numbers. How is this helpful? First lets assume that you have an excel version of the database. (I am happy to give you one - just leave me a comment below.) Now, lets say I want to do a layout about my baby nephew eating. First I use the "find" function in excel to search the database for keywords like "eating" and "food". The spreadsheet says I can find "baby eating" images on pg 27 and 47. Page 47 has a baby boy, so I select that image. The phrase on that same page says "fun food" but that isn't what I am looking for so I type the word "eating" in the find box and hit return....I get a couple options but no, I don't like those phrases. So I think of other words that associate with eating? Ok, I type in "hungry," hit return and I get an adorable layered phrase that works perfectly. This process took me a few minutes while if I had done it by hand I could have been at it for an hour or more!
You can download a PDF copy of this spreadsheet by clicking here:

I will be posting a new cartridge daily with this
information. If you find any errors in the spreadsheet, please let me
know so I can correct them. If you would like to share this information
on your blog, instead of copy and pasting this info, please paste a
link to my site. Tomorrow, I intend to post "Birthday Bash". Have a happy and safe 4th of July!

I'm so glad the spreadsheet was helpful. When you cut the outline which is the primary image for the key, you are left with the outline plus the inner parts which will include the smile. Unless you cut out a large size of the image, the eyes will not cut out the eyes very cleanly, so I use a 1/16 hole punch on the same colored paper as I used on the outline. You can do the same thing for the cheeks and maybe use a 1/8 inch hole punch so it doesn't look like 4 eyes. You could also take a little chalk, stickles or ink on a q-tip and dust the cheeks. I hope this helps. Please don't hesitate to ask any other questions. Thanks for visiting!

I just discovered your blog! So awesome that you have an excel spreadsheet. I have most of the carts you have done an overview on. Would you be willing to share you excel spreadsheets? I will need to fill in the others that you don't have on my own. What a great idea! Thanks!